Sailmakers - any recommendations?

[rolandw]

I recently went through the results from last year and realised that when I swapped out the "old" suit of sails for the "new, never used" ones that came with the boat, our performance went from "just about OK for a newbie" to shockingly slow. I know that the boat isn't slow (at least it wasn't in Graham and Zoe's hands) so it could be me or it could be the sails - let's blame the sails for now because I used not to be quite that slow sailing other boats... Both of the sets of sails are from the same maker and I won't say who for obvious reasons. So I'm thinking of using this enforced no-sail period to get some new sails sorted. I'm based in Sussex and so someone relatively local might be of benefit. Has anyone had particularly good experiences with any sailmakers and would be prepared to make recommendations? If anyone has a really bad experiences then it might be best to contact me privately because we don't want anyone being sued for defamation! Does anyone know of any sailmaker wanting to develop sails for the class that might not be normally found? Does any sailmaker want to put themselves forward?

[3513SL]

Hi Roland,


I'd expect Graham (and Zoe) probably have the measurements somewhere of the sails they used when they owned her and which sails they felt worked best - I'd expect they were P&B who are "the gold standard".

[NTOACertification]

Roland , When Graham had 3492 he used Alverbank Sails. The P&B's were probably purchased by later owners.  When I finished  sail making in 2009 /10 our design pattern info went to HD Sails.


The rig listed on the certificate seems to be the original dimension With a minute change in 2008.


The usual P & B rig is different with a much smaller jib area.


Kevan Bloor ( Hon Cert) ex Alverbank

[rolandw]

As Kevan says, the originals were Alverbanks - I do have them but the main has big rip in the leech and the jib has clearly seen better days. Nevertheless, they will be useful as something to measure off.

I spent years helping develop sails that depended massively on the cunningham - anything from small dinghies to IACC yachts. In some cases we had cunninghams on the jibs as well as the mains so that we could play with luff tension on headsails without leaving the windward rail. I did a long distance race on a daft 20ft cat (that was 30ft wide and had a 40ft tall rig) where the only sail control I touched for daily runs up to 200 miles was the 32 to 1 cunningham (but the helm did play with the traveller a little). How come the cunningham has been deprecated to an also run and the kicker promoted so much?

[Dave Croft]

Hi Roland,


I would definitely have a word with Dave at Dynamic Sails in Emsworth if you haven't already sorted this out.


Cheers, Dave C